Why Plastic?

Plastic will be the death of me. The death of all of us really.

We all know The Three R's: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. However, given the current state of our beloved planet, we may need to add an extra R: Relocate.

While we wait for Elon Musk to use his knowledge and bank account to make that last one happen, there are so many things that we measly, non-billionaire people can do to help our planet in the meantime.

First, let's re-educate ourselves on what we already think we know. It may or may not surprise you that a lot of what we have come to know is mostly a marketing ploy. I apologize in advance for the wake-up call.

Recycling: It is a Business and it is Failing

The truth about recycling is that it doesn't always happen. All of those glass pickle jars and plastic milk jugs that you shove inside your latest Amazon purchase cardboard box are not guarunteed to get recycled.

What USED to happen is that American cities would round up those green bins full of our carefully recycled items and sell them to China. China in turn would then use them to make socks or other items. That is right: we recycled because it was profitable. But then, China realized that we were not very good at sorting our recycling, and we also sucked at cleaning all the peanut butter out of our jars. Not to mention they had their own hustling economy and no longer needed to use our dirty, unsorted recyclables.

So now, we have to process all of those bottles and jugs on our own. And it is expensive. Depending on the city you live in, the price of recycling may fall on the branch owner. If they feel something should be recycled, they pay out of their own pocket. This means that a majority of our recycled items end up in the landfill anyway. The business of recycling is just not there anymore.

What do we do now?

We all want to help our planet (I hope). But you may be feeling down after hearing your hard work and your children's art projects on being green are ending up in the dump. But there are still ways to help!

I am not telling everyone that we need to go zero waste and live in the mountains and only eat foraged berries. In all reality, that level of a sustainable lifestyle is not attainable for everyone. If I told you that you could never buy another food item packaged in plastic again, an overwhelming majority of people would eat only bananas due to the extreme food deserts in this country. That is another topic, but we cannot expect everyone to take the same level of action.

Remember those three R's? Notice how recycle should be your LAST option? We should be doing our best to reduce what we are currently taking in and reusing the things we already have. Here are some examples of what you can do with plastic and glass BEFORE you recycle it.

1. Reuse your plastic milk cartons as watering jugs to water all your plants (shout out to all the plant parents trying to keep their tiny gardens alive)

2. Take the label off all the wine bottles you've bought to stay sane during coronavirus and use them as water carafes at your next dinner.

3. Take your newspaper and line the bottom of your garbage can in order to catch any liquids and reduce funky smells.

4. Use old pasta sauce jars, salsa jars, lunch meat tubs, you name it, in order to store any leftovers, homemade soups or sauces, or half-used produce. This way you can save money on those fancy over-priced containers and stop using so much plastic wrap.

A real game-changer is to just use a plate to cover a bowl before putting in the fridge. Free and easy.

5. Use an egg carton as a seed starter to grow your house garden.

There is so much you can do.

We have so much we can do to save our purchases from ending up in the landfill or at the very least delay it. And that is the main point really: Striving for the impossible will stop us from starting. We will produce some amount of trash, but we can limit it the best we can.

Try your best. Make informed decisions. Cut yourself some slack. We aren't out of time yet.